Realism in gaming is something that’s blossomed over the years, and that’s to be expected. As any medium grows and evolves, it will start to reflect the real world more and more. This trend can be observed in various art forms throughout history, yet there’s always been a place for deviation, a place where the realistic takes a back seat, and surrealism takes over. This, in my humble opinion, is where gaming shines, and it’s a shame to see the medium ignoring the outlandish in favor of the expected.
The problem I find most troubling with realism in games, is that video games are inherently unrealistic. By definition, even, video games must adhere to some sense of absurdity. In Uncharted, no matter how realistic and convincing the characters and environments may be, the fact is that Nathan Drake can take a hell of a lot of damage, and is a little too good with every gun known to man. In Call of Duty, if realism is such a coveted aspect of the series, why does your character only bleed out of his eyes, and why is damage rarely permanent? The “game” part of these games keeps them from being truly realistic, and in turn makes them even less believable. Characters like Link, or even Master Chief, are believable in even the most absurd situations, as the worlds that they belong to don’t try to conform to the world that we live in.
That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy realism in games. I’m certainly able to enjoy games that attempt to emulate the real world, but on the whole I find it much easier to be enveloped by a game the more detached it is from reality.
The recently released Alice: Madness Returns is a fantastic example of this. While it’s critical and commercial reception was less than enthusiastic, I enjoyed it more than a lot of games that I’ve played this year. The art design was phenomenal and extraordinarily unique, with characters that hinted at the truly sensational, even when the game shifted from it’s Wonderland setting into it’s Victorian England “real world” setting.
Games like World of Warcraft take on an exaggerated art style as well, and developers like Double Fine are notorious for outlandish and bizarre games, and even titles that didn’t fare quite as well such as Brutal Legend are still memorable simply because of the brilliance of the art design and characters.
So what is it, exactly, that sets these sorts of game apart? There are many games like Resident Evil 5 or Gears of War that clearly favor a more realistic edge, that aren’t exclusively realistic in their presentation or content. Yet, those games are still very clearly lacking in surrealism or any real imagination. It doesn’t take much to take a standard war scenario and throw some aliens or zombies in.
No, what separates these two types of games is that the surreal and imaginative ones suggest exploration by design – they are the sorts of games that you’ll get lost in even when you’re not playing them. They are games that you’ll dream about. This can be achieved with something incredibly simple, like the Amp Cliffs and the Screaming Wall from Brutal Legend, to the wonderfully varied design of Madness Returns.
Both of those games feature unique and differing environments, with Brutal Legend ranging from a Spider’s Den filled with guitar string webbing, to an ancient ruin filled jungle, and with Madness Returns proudly featuring macabre levels that dabble in Steampunk, ruined castles, and even a traditional Japanese garden. Subsequently there are entire series, like Dragon Quest, that rely heavily on a very specific type of design. Much of the charm and quirkiness of Dragon Quest is achieved by Akira Toriyama, the primary art director behind the series, and the games have a sense of whimsy that is immediately recognizable because of his art.
To be very clear, I’m not suggesting that a game can just throw on some nice cartoony visuals and call it good. Video games are a two part deal, and good gameplay is key in any game. But the fact is, good gameplay isn’t that hard to achieve these days. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any sort of truly innovative gameplay mechanics introduced in a game, and the industry has gotten to the point where many games seem the same.
So why not do something new once in a while? I understand that consumers can be a fickle audience, and that the success of a product relies heavily on familiarity, but being overly familiar can be just as detrimental as being overly strange, and there’s a middle ground that is too often ignored by developers. We’ve come a long way since the days of Pong and Pac-Man, and the design of a game has much more to offer than to simply be a vehicle for the gameplay.
This stance on gaming, of course, has a lot to do with why I play video games. Like many people, I enjoy the escapism that gaming offers. I’ve found that sense of being elsewhere is rarely achieved by games that rely heavily on realism. Imagination and creativity begets imagination and creativity, and no matter how fun or well tuned a game is, if it doesn’t offer any sort of visual pop or stimulation, it likely won’t evoke a reaction from the player. The times that I’ve truly marveled at a game haven’t been when it most resembles reality, but rather when it presented something truly unique.
The sad fact, however, is that people largely like what they know, and with a medium that is as expensive as video games, it can be difficult to take a chance on something different. However, one must remember that in it’s infancy, the entire gaming industry was something different. Gaming wouldn’t be where it is today if it weren’t for people taking a chance on it, so why ignore something that could be a change for the better? Why encourage a hobby we love to dry out, and become stale?
As a popular medium, gaming is on the rise, and with that raised awareness will come better and better technology. With these advancements, though, I hope that we continue to see games that try to make us think, games that speak with their visuals and are unique and full of imagination. Photorealism may very well be the way of the future, but to quote the aforementioned Alice: Madness Returns, “Photographs are a kind of imitation. A great painter captures a true likeness. The camera helps an amateur come close.”
“being overly familiar can be just as detrimental as being overly strange” – so true. I’m getting pretty bored of FPS games. And I won’t remember any of them as fondly as I remember playing Mario, Link, or Megaman.
Having said that, there is something to be said for realism. No game has ever taken me to the old west like Red Dead Redemption did. But I think that was realism in a genre that hadn’t been touched that much before.
It’s definitely a balance – both are important.
The only issue with this is that there was NO wild west period. There was no duels at high noon. This is a romanticization of the Period by spaghetti westerns and western fictions.
All western games are unrealistic, unless its about wrangling cattle, butchering Indians.
Red Dead Redemption is not realistic at ALL. Its entirely unrealistic, and that’s what makes it so fun!
Oh, aboslutely. Red Dead is one of my favorite games of all time. It just bums me out that imaginative games are more and more getting left by the wayside. There’s so much untapped potential in the gaming industry that is getting ignored for the same rehashed content every year, and the games that DO try something new generally don’t get any exposure. Hell, Clover went out of business because of the failure of Okami, which is one of the most imaginative games, as well as one of the best games, I have ever played.
Team Fortress 2 will age beautifully and will be played for many years to come. Why? Stylized graphics. Realistic 3D doesn’t last more than 2-3 years without looking phony because the next wave of games feature ambient light occlusion mapping or however many fancy bells and whistles to make them just a bit real-er.
Too true. Some of the most memorable games, as others have said, are the stylized games like Okami, Wind Waker, and TF2. There are those gems like Red Dead Redemption that mix in realism, but because it will be outdated soon, the next technology will make us forget it rather quickly.
I think the real important thing is synergy. A game can be packed to the rim with realism and it doesn’t do squat if the story doesn’t back it up. Likewise a great story can be extremely hard to get into if it has graphics that make your eyes bleed.
I am an insanely huge fan of the first couple of Final Fantasy games, and can still to this day spend hours playing them. Sure the graphics aren’t realistic 3D, but they fit perfectly with the story, with the audio, with the whole experience, and that is what is missing from a shockingly large number of games that are coming out recently.
This article made me realise that none of the games I regularly play are realistic, and that all the realistic games I’ve played recently have been entirely forgettable. I love being immersed in a world where things are unpredictable and my surroundings are new and fascinating.
When a game shows me a tree, I’d rather think “Wow, what fruit is on that tree? That’s such a bizarre kind of bark and the branches are twisted so oddly! I wonder what lives in that large hole?” than “Oh look a tree.”
I popped on Tron 2.0 for this very reason. It was much more fun for the surreal setting. The RPGish elements added a lot to the game too. Show’s you don’t have to completely dumb down the to make something accessible.
Also the ‘realism’ on offer is usually a 13 year olds version; just make it all brown, covered in blood and have everyone swear.
“So why not do something new once in a while?”
This reminds me of an article i read some time ago that simply made the point that what is seen as a “good” company or leader in America isn’t one that innovates, just one that doesn’t make mistakes. Hence why the gaming market is stagnating so much if you look at the big companies. Good thing a lot of indie developers are also on the rise and aren’t afraid to take risks.
Surrealism =/= being unrealistic
Sadly the term Surrealism gets thrown around a lot, but it does not mean unrealistic. Surrealism has to do with the unconscious and as such it is dependent on the unconscious of both the creator and the user.
Modern Warfare can be considered a surrealistic game, the claims you made about it being unrealistic, endless health, being good at everything, bleeding from the eyes are all important surreal elements of the game. They can be extracted to a grander meaning of one’s dreams of being manly, or one’s grief, or one’s feeling of being blinded by war.
Modern Warfare is making just as much of a surrealistic point as a realistic point,
What you should be arguing is we need LESS realistic games, that I can agree with. But ALL games have surrealistic elements from Worms, to Doom, to Uncharted, to World of Warcraft.
@LordBobIV: This is actually what I was trying to articulate a little bit in the first paragraph, but upon re-reading it, the wording was a bit off. When I said that gaming must adhere so some sense of absurdity, this is sort of what I was trying to get across. The absurd and surreal elements in games are there either by design, or by definition. But I feel that there are clear games that EMBRACE these elements and then there are games that try to avoid them. Literally all games are going to have some surrealistic attributes, but many games choose to either ignore those elements, or even try to stamp them out entirely. I think it’s safe to say that the the ultimate goal of gaming on a whole right now is to create the most immersive worlds ever, in the sense that they mimic our own. That’s all well and good, but I think games need to accept the fact that they are games; they’re meant to be a little over the top, they are meant to be fun.
I feel like the surreal aspects of CoD would be stamped out entirely if not for the fact that because CoD is a video game, they sort of have to be there. I’d just like to see more games that realize that they are games, and have fun with it, rather than try to be as realistic and serious as possible.
Ive wasted countless hours of my life playing Half Life. Which was a great mix of real and surreal.
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An interesting read. I think there’s room for a variety of games, from the ultra-realistic on down to absurdly whimsical and in between. As it is, I don’t really see a disparity in the market of games between the realistic and the surreal/absurd….except perhaps with regards to the fact that most “realistic” titles tend to be Triple-A releases and most surreal or absurdist titles invariably lean toward the Indie scene.
I have one word for you. Giants.